


My Ascension

by midnightplanets



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Backstory, Banter, Blood and Violence, Crack and Angst, F/M, Flirting, Gen, Introspection, Loss, Loss of Faith, Loss of Innocence, Loss of Parent(s), Murder, Revenge, Seduction to the Dark Side, The Dark Side of the Force, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-22 07:16:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8277385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightplanets/pseuds/midnightplanets
Summary: "Master Ky is dead"Asajj Ventress deals with the death of her master and the growing darkness inside her. A timeline of her ascension to becoming Dooku's assassin, with introspection on her loss of faith in the Jedi Order and her own goodness. During the Clone Wars, she meets someone more intriguing to her than revenge...





	

“Master Ky is dead.” Asajj Ventress’s deep gritty voice boomed out louder than it seemed possible for such a small person. The teenaged Jedi apprentice had clambered up on a stack of wooden crates at the Rattatak marketplace, where a small crowd had started to gather to watch their local Jedi protector, small and now alone, standing tall and stoic to address the people who lived in daily gratitude for her and her late master’s protection.

“This violence must end! I will see to it that Master Ky’s mission will be fulfilled. I will not abandon you, and I will not desecrate his memory by shying away and living in cowardice.”

She ignited and lifted two green lightsabers in the air. “I will take up his sword. I will continue to fight.” She blinked away pestering tears as she looked up at the blades, then switched them off.  “And I ask for your support.” She crossed the saber hilts in front of her body and bowed in a token of humility.

She looked around as the crowd began to cheer, women began to tear up and bury their faces in their sleeves, hold their children a little tighter. She nodded in appreciation. “Thank you,” she mumbled, and leapt down from the crates onto the ground.

She was met with hugs and pats on the shoulder, which she received with a wooden lack of grace. She felt hollow and all she wanted to do was go home. As she made her way through the crowd, a persistent hand that held onto her shoulder caused her to turn around. A blue twi-lek woman in a brown dingy robe, with an equally shabbily dressed child at her waist gazed at her beseechingly and offered her a meiloorun. “Here,” she spoke firmly. Asajj stared at the yellow and orange bumpy fruit.

“The loss of your master is devastating news. It must be hard, even for a Jedi.” The woman’s eyes betrayed a sense of pain that said that she knew all too well the tragedy of loss. Asajj let their eyes meet for only a moment, before the pain in her own began to blossom into tears.

“Thank you,” she muttered with a quick bow, taking the fruit hastily. The woman smiled. Asajj turned away and hurried home.

Nearing her hut, she saw an adult male Weequay, whose eyes followed her for an uncomfortably long time. She sneered. Even with her mostly shaved head and lack of traditional feminine graces, she still attracted unwanted attention more often than she cared for. Master Ky had always told her to be mindful of her anger in these situations but now that he was gone, she answered to no one but herself. And her feelings were telling her that this man was scum.

“Hey little lady, your master’s not here to protect you anymore now is he,” the Weequay spoke up with a grin, and followed her with a swagger.

“Back off, sleamo,” she growled, and opened the door of her hut.

Unfortunately, the Weequay followed her inside.

“That means you’re in this cold, empty hut all by yourself,” he mused, stroking his whiskers. “You must be so lonely…”

 _Stop_ she glared at him, _don’t you dare say it…_

“Maybe I could help you warm it up a little,” he sneered, as he raised his hands and closed in on her. She could smell the alcohol on his breath, and –

With a snap and a hiss, her lightsaber was on.

“Get out of my house!” she screamed at him, force pushing him against the wall. He grunted, stunned at first, then started laughing.

“Aaaaah!!” she shrieked in a grief-maddened bloodlust she had been suppressing all day, and impaled her lightsaber straight through his heart.

The man looked up at her stunned, wound smoking, for just a moment. She stared at him straight in the eyes, and watched as the life drained out of him. She switched off her blade and watched him crumple to the floor, and kicked him with her boot. She sniffed. _Slime._ She thought. _This world is full of utter and vile slime._

 

Usually her and Master Ky had buried those they had slain, or burned them respectfully on a pyre. She had no desire to put in that much effort for her current victim. She dragged his body out the door and along the ground until she reached the back of a nearby restaurant. There was a large commercial dumpster, into which she unceremoniously dumped her victim. _There. In where you deserve._ She brushed off her hands and wrinkled her nose, and turned to walk away.

 

Back inside her hut, now truly alone, she washed her hands and sat down to eat the meiloorun. She sighed as she wrapped her fingers around its leathery skin and soft flesh. The people here were kind to her, they saw her and her master as saviors, and she was lucky to have their support and love. She wondered if they would still treat her the same way if they knew how much she delighted in the hate and rage that was now her sustenance day after day, with every victory on the battlefield, every drop of blood her saber tasted…

Her teeth broke through the fruit’s thin taut skin, and bit into the juicy flesh. A savior at what cost? She was a cold-blooded murderer now. The Jedi were taught to only kill in self-defense. But after her master died, she had killed his assailant, his assailant’s men and anyone she didn’t recognize as being an ally, indiscriminate to who was attacking her and who was trying to run, pleading for their lives. She even killed those who were on her side but were getting in her way. If anyone on Rattatak ever gave an eopie’s fart about criminal justice and forensics, they would have discovered that many casualties on both sides of the civil war were caused by the work of a lightsaber.

A better Jedi would care. A better Jedi would feel remorse. She felt nothing. Nothing but the knowledge that she would feel shame that if Ky were here, because he would disapprove. But he wasn’t here. He wasn’t, he wasn’t, and he wasn’t coming back.

She hugged her knees now as she tossed her finished meiloorun pit in the garbage and lay her head down on her knees. It was late but sleep did not come easily to her these days. She woke at every little sound, slept with her lightsaber under her pillow. Ky had been her life for the past 12 years, she could barely remember her life without him, barely knew how to function. She could always depend on Ky to be there whenever she asked for him, to always be smiling and eager to spend time with her, praise her, always ask for her at his side. She felt wanted, important.

The only thing she could ever not talk to Ky about were these dark feelings, these inklings for revenge for the person that had killed her former master, this feeling that these warlords were scum and the planet would be better off without them. Ky taught her the importance of life, of peace, of giving people a choice to do better. But her stomach churned whenever she thought of the evil they created, the deaths they caused, not just their victims but the people that her and Ky had slaughtered by their own hands, who were manipulated into war by these architects of destruction, greedy only for power and to glut themselves on riches.

When Ky was alive she had hope. Hope in the Force. Under his instruction she learned to feel it guiding her every move, felt a touch of magic, something unexplainable and ecstatic, and awe at this power that she was given a part of. She cherished her role as a protector of the galaxy, that she was bringing balance to something greater than herself, making a difference in the bindings of the universe.

But after his death she couldn’t feel it anymore. It was as if she were lighting a candle that would not stay lit. Her rage and hate gave her tunnel vision with a singular purpose – the warlords would pay. The anger lit a fuse of adrenaline that was constantly coursing through her veins, she had so much pent up energy, her limbs were restless, her focus was steel, every move was crystal clear and a sharp point of precision, and she never missed. It was rage that got her out of bed in the morning, gave her a sense of purpose, something left to do, something left to belong to, instead of the cold reality of what she really was – a girl abandoned on a strange planet, away from her kin, alone and without hope of rescue. The hate kept her alive.

She had hoped for so long the Jedi would come back. She used to dream about what the Jedi temple must look like, tall pillars of gold, red carpeted hallways, a courtyard with an ancient tree, Masters and padawans all treating each other with respect and kindness. She used to dream about finding her belonging there, and Master Ky finally losing that empty look in his eyes that he got sometimes when he stared at the sky and didn’t know Asajj was watching.

She loved Ky, she loved him with all her heart and it tore her apart to see him like that. It made her angry that the Jedi would not come back for him. They had other important things to do, Ky would tell her, they’ll come back when it’s the right time. For a time she believed him. She had hope in the Jedi. Trust. They may have had more important things to do. They may have had faith that Ky would be fine or may have thought it the will of the Force that he be stranded there, and consequently find and train her. But her patience wore thin and her concern for the rest of the galaxy was gone. Who cares if the Jedi thought something was more important, it didn’t change the fact that the Jedi failed _him,_ they failed Ky and they are failing her now. They didn’t care about her. They didn’t even know she existed. She would die alone and unwanted, an incomplete padawan on Rattatak. No one would know about how much she had devoted her life to being a Jedi but her, and the Force – the light side of the Force, the part that was now silent.

She was done being selfless. She wanted a better life. She was the only person left it seemed who still cared about Ky, so protecting his memory meant protecting herself. As a denizen of Rattatak, she would protect herself and the other civilians who were tired of being trampled on by the warlords. It was in _all_ of their interests to eliminate the warlords. That was step one, but from there on out it would be the pursuit of whatever advanced her own interests. From that moment on, Asajj Ventress answered to no one but herself.

 

Over the next few months, she would occasionally find meilooruns on her doorstep. She ate them with increasing guilt, as her kill count rose to the tens of dozens, and among them more and more innocents caught in the wake of her destruction. Eventually she left the fruit untouched on the doorstep to rot, until they stopped showing up altogether.

As the days wore on, the sleepless nights and guilt became less and less common, and her sense of justice became more resolute.

 

One by one, the warlords fell. She got facial tattoos to symbolize her conquest. Instead of trying to hide her femininity, she now used it as a tool – the more skin and curves she showed, the less resistance her enemies put up to her advances, and she could get close in while they were distracted and strike when they least expected it. She learned to mask her repulsion and feign infatuation. She learned to revel in her power not only as a warrior but the ability to make men weak at the knees. She kept her head held high, her eyes cold, and her lips in a wicked smile.

 

The last warlord didn’t wait for her to attack first, he ambushed her at her palace. Their fight took them down a hallway where she had a statue built to Ky, and an alcove where his lightsaber stood suspended in display. The warlord slashed at her with his sword, but she parried it with her lightsaber and it broke in two, and she used the force to push the severed blade through his chest cavity and through his heart. The warlord clutched at his chest and stumbled in pain. He dropped the remaining hilt of his sword and started grabbing furiously at the wall, trying to find a handhold to stable himself with. In his desperation he grabbed Ky’s lightsaber, smearing his own blood all over the hilt. He stared at it in puzzlement for a moment, then his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed on the ground.

Disgusted, Asajj, raced over to Ky’s lightsaber, attempting furiously to wipe the blood off the hilt with her skirt. She managed to clean off the outer surface, but not the grooves that adorned the choke. She held it, dazed, for a moment, letting her victory sink in. She did it, she had now completed her quest for revenge and killed all the warlords, all who were responsible for the violence on Rattatak that led to her master’s death. But instead of satisfaction, all she felt was emptiness, and a devastating, bewildering sense of loss. _What now?_

Asajj Ventress, newly victorious queen of Rattatak, crouched in the hallway underneath the statue of her late master, clutching his lightsaber to her chest, and wept.

 

As queen, she heard rumors… that their galaxy at war was being played on both sides by a group of Force users more mysterious and ruthless than the Jedi – the Sith. Ky had told her that they were dark side users that were eaten away by their anger and hatred until they lost all their humanity, and survived only on the rage that fueled them. _Sounds like it suits me_ , she thought wryly. Darth Sidious was the elusive master, but Darth Tyrannus, however, was known to be none other than Count Dooku, the leader of the Separatists, who was fighting the Republic and the Jedi they employed as generals.

 _Disgusting,_ _how the Jedi have lost their way…_ she thought, _They are nothing my master would have been proud of. They are delusional and self-righteous and nothing more than murderers themselves._ She found herself filled with anger yet again, a fresh desire for revenge, limited not just to her planet this time, but now one that would spread throughout the reaches of the galaxy. One that centered on… the Jedi Order. The ones who had failed her master. The ones who were _responsible_ for him being on this Force-forsaken planet in the first place –

She straightened in her chair in the throne room and closed her holopad. “Attendant,” she called out to a small squat woman that sat at a desk to the right of her.

The alien squeaked and adjusted her glasses to look up at Asajj. “Yes, your highness?”

“Make an appointment for me with Count Dooku,” Asajj commanded, narrowing her eyes contemplatively. “Tell him that Rattatak is interested in joining the Confederacy of Independent Systems.”

 

 

The political negotiations were practically non-existent, Asajj was all too eager to contribute her planet to the Separatist cause to help her chances of becoming Count Dooku’s apprentice and learning the ways of the Sith. She shaved her head as a symbol of obedience and devotion to the dark side, and knelt in front of Dooku in his chambers.

“I sense much darkness in you,” Dooku observed pensively, with a touch of sadness and empathy in his voice.

“Yes,” Asajj responded, bowing her head before him. She had not prostrated herself in front of anyone for years, but she was no longer content in just being remembered in galactic history as a queen. No, she wanted to be remembered as a Sith, a powerful force user responsible for the downfall of the corrupt Jedi Order. And to do that, she would do whatever it takes, including be subservient to this old man. He was haughty and obsessed with fine living and royal pedigrees, which caused him to look down on her, queen by her own merit and not by bloodline. Asajj Ventress was used to proving her worth. She would not fail. She would make him see that she was worthy of becoming a Sith.

“You will make a fine assassin for me,” he said at last, and she looked up, puzzled, “Prove yourself in this, and we will discuss your ascension to the Sith.”

A wicked grin spread across her face as she beamed in gratitude. “Thank you… _Master_ ,” she said once again.

 

The Jedi were infuriating to fight. They looked at her with pompous self-righteousness, and reacted in disgust at her sultry advances that sought to threaten their vow of non-attachment. _Delusional,_ she thought. _I’m doing them a favor, liberating them from that dreary lifestyle of theirs, their devotion to an Order that doesn’t care about them._ Despite it all, it was intriguing for once in her life to see so many different force users like her, and somewhere deep inside it hurt that lonely little padawn inside of her for them to look at her with so much disdain. She had to steel her heart early on and not wonder _What I_ had _been taken to the Jedi temple? Could we have been friends?_ Or, more devastatingly, _What if this was one of Master Ky’s friends?_

Her assignment on Felucia was like any other battle, commanding an army of droids while seeking to steal Republic intelligence from their military outpost. She had broken into the command center, killed the guards, and was downloading the data onto a chromium card when a pair of Jedi entered, blue lightsabers blazing.

“Halt, Separatist, and we won’t have to hurt you!” the younger one cried out. He was clean shaven with long dark brown hair and blue eyes. He was glaring at her intensely.

Her card was still downloading so she decided to have a bit of fun with the Jedi.

“It’ll take more than a mere boy like you to be able to hurt me,” she smugly replied. The boy’s eyes narrowed.

“You are mistaken if you think I am ‘merely’ a boy,” he retorted indignantly, “I am a Jedi knight!”

“Anakin, let me give you a word of advice,” The older, bearded Jedi sighed in response, “Insisting you are _not_ a boy makes you seem even _more_ boyish than you were to begin with!”

Anakin groaned. “Master, this really isn’t the best time to be lecturing me,” nodded in Ventress’s direction.

She couldn’t help but smile at the exchange. Her card beeped, indicating the download was done. She slipped the card in her bodice, making sure to do so slowly in plain view of the Jedi and with a sly grin on her face.

“Come and get it, boys,” she taunted them. Anakin grimaced. The older Jedi smiled. He advanced towards her while Anakin circled around to flank her from behind, and she ignited her lightsabers.

 _Hah_ , she thought, as the three of them exchanged blows, circling around the perimeter of the command center, _These Jedi are strong… too strong for me to take on both of them at once in combat. But in terms of my ‘other’ talents… this Jedi Master is too easy. He fell for my teasing right away like he has no care in the world about breaking the Jedi Code!_

She smirked and jumped away from the Jedi towards the window, cut an X shape incision in the transparisteel and kicked it out and jumped through the cascade of broken glass – but not before the older Jedi had grabbed her by the waist and was now hurtling down with her face first onto one of the large fleshy plants that covered the Felucian landscape.

“Argh!” Ventress cried out as he landed on top of her and the plant exploded in a great burst of blue slime. “Get _off_ of me!” she roared and kicked the Jedi away. He rolled to the side of her on the ground that was now littered with plant carnage. She reached into her bodice and pulled out the data card to make sure it was still intact, _Good, that means I don’t have to go back and download another copy_ , she thought, but now that her fingers were covered in blue plant slime, it slipped right out of her hands and onto the ground – where it was snatched away by the force pull of a grinning Jedi Master.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you have this, my darling,” he said, while brushing his wet hair out of his face. He dropped the card onto the ground in front of him and stomped on it with his boot. The card shattered.

“Aaaaugh!” Ventress screamed in frustration, both at the fact that the card was destroyed, but also at the audacity of the Jedi Master in calling her _darling._ The Jedi’s smug expression only fueled her outrage. _Oh, I’ll make you pay… I’ll get you where you are weak_ –

“If I was really your ‘darling’,” Ventress pouted, feigning hurt feelings, “You would have let me have that data card,” she sulked.

His expression changed into that of surprised amusement, “Believe me my dear,” he said, brows furrowed in a feigned tortured expression and his hand over his heart, “If it was in my power, I would let you have anything you want.” Ventress took advantage of that chance to spring forward and plant herself on the Jedi Master’s chest. He stumbled back in shock.

“Anything?” she asked in a raspy whisper as she traced circles on his breastplate and gazed up at him through her lashes, fluttering her eyelids. The Jedi gasped, flustered, apparently not aware that she would take her ruse this far. His cheeks were now turning pink. Asajj smiled. _Success._

But her triumph was short lived, as the Jedi quickly recovered and wrapped his arms around her and dipped her over his knee, so she was helplessly enclosed in his arms and staring up into his clear blue eyes. Asajj found her heart beating fast. _He’s good,_ she thought. It was not often someone could beat her in her own game.

“I’ll give you anything you deserve,” he teased, and smiled a mischievous grin before dropping her unceremoniously on the ground.

“Master Kenobi!” a clone shouted out from behind them.

Ventress groaned and rubbed her shoulder where it had hit the ground. The Jedi had already turned and was running towards the clone without a backwards glance at Ventress.

“Kenobi, huh?” Ventress stroked her chin in contemplation. He was an interesting Jedi.


End file.
